Bird Exploration Safaris

Being a avid bird-watcher in Europe for most of my life, I was overwhelmed by the variety and numbers of birds that I experienced when I first came to Southern Africa in 1992. Little has changed since then: 25 eagles in one glance through my binoculars, green-backed heron fishing half a meter away completely ignoring me, 180 bird-species in my garden alone, a fish eagle crash-diving on a Goliath heron to get some easy fish, even the noisy francolins waking me in the bush before the crack of dawn is a much more pleasant sound than the alarm-clock going off.

What has never stopped amazing me is how tame the birds are here: hornbills readily take bread out of my hand; babblers hop around the campsites missing no crumb; bulbuls often investigate the kitchen; saddlebilled storks watch you when you stop the car and 30 seconds later will resume their fishing as if you're not there. The list is endless. This is very different from my native Belgium, where you might catch a glance of a bird before it is gone.

I've lead many tours with "bird-fanatics" during the last few years. After one very rewarding day at Lake Ngami, some French birdwatchers told me this was the most diverse bird-watching area they had ever visited (and they had been everywhere!).

Southern Africa has to offer more than 900 bird species, of which 134 are endemics. Botswana, by itself, has around 450 species, with numerous "unrecorded" species still being sited. I've personally seen on three different occasions a species which is on the official "seen less than five times in Botswana" list.

What to expect: if you visit between November and the end of March, when all migrant birds are around, you can easily see around 120 species within a week. With some luck and a bit more time to visit diverse habitats, this figure can get much higher (222 species in eight days is my standing record). For the rest of the year, set your expectations a bit lower, but not by much.